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Cultural diversity underscores a range of various societies and people who come from different backgrounds, like traditions of all living, values in life and interacting together. Therefore, the idea of building or managing cultural diversity is that, the management should not discard or ignore other cultural identities, but sustain and respect them. In the hospitality industry, cultural diversity has grown to become a serious issue of address.
The report concentrates on the discussion on benefits and challenges of cultural diversity, the opportunity cultural diversity offers and provides practical recommendations that can help the management (human resources) to deal with the multicultural diversity issues effectively.
Cultural diversity needs management because it presents a particularly significant challenge to work with people from different backgrounds in terms of race, sexual orientation, social and economic statuses, ethnicity, age, gender, beliefs (values), language, and traditions. This mosaic of people bringing together different styles, viewpoints, values, ideas, and traditions are assets to the organization that they interact in.
These differences are usually easy to describe in terms of the primary dimensions aforementioned. The secondary diversity dimensions include education, religion, and marital statuses among others. The increased diversity in the hospitality industry presents new challenges and indeed opportunities for enterprises that operate every sector of the economy.
Diversity is not something that can just be wished away, and it disappears so that people can plan and operate, do business in a mutual understanding manner. More diversity still underpins business and determines the direction of operation and decision making in an organization. Just like other industries, hospitality faces specific cultural diversity challenges and opportunities.
Managing diversity offers the organization an advantage in terms of competitiveness. The reason being that, it helps to include every person from a difference background, and thus ends up ensuring that each one is accommodated and eventually produces the highest quality management, which can be achieved.
Most of the time, diversity is a considerable advantage to the business enterprise as it offers a wide variety labour resource, and cultural vitality need in the modern world that has seen increased travel and communication from all corners of the earth. However, this does not mean that diversity does not have its own hardships.
The most noticeable demerits of multicultural diversity management include problems of language barrier, social tension, and disengagement. However, these reasons should act as pointers on how to handle diversity in the ever-changing world that has become one global village.
Occasionally, workplace conflicts emerge because of multicultural diversity management. For instance, in certain cases, ‘white’ employees can feel institutionally discriminated against when workplace used diversity instruments like disparate test.
African American can just feel discriminated against when the top management is full of white managers. However, valuing all employees leads to workplace that accepts different worldviews, different approaches to decision making and recognize work at a global perception.
Cultural diversity can be managed well by the hospitality industry so that it gives the organization some substantial competitive advantage (Leitner 2008, p.17). The idea of competitive advantage is that, an organization gets to have epical skills resources or product not found in others. Managing cultural diversity can give an organization a sustainable competitive advantage (Anca, & Vazquez 2007, p.102).
A sustainable competitive advantage for the hospitality business will be the things that the company does and are better compared to the competitor’s; valuable to the clients; rare in the industry dealings; and difficult to gain access to or imitate.
Most of the workers in the hospitality industry come from different ethnicities and the clients they deal with come from all parts of the world (Wetherell 2008, p.108). Therefore, simply having a culturally diverse workforce is not necessarily the best way of gaining competitive advantage (Anca, & Vazquez 2007, p.102).
It is quite advantageous when an organization has programs that add moral and value to the workforce (Warner, & Joynt 2002, p.92). They also increase efficiency and an aura of fairness and equality despite the identity of the employee or the client.
Workers have higher appreciation of the job and customers are comfortable in the organization (Brotherton 2003, p. 98). Well-managed workforce diversity increases workplace effectiveness and maximizes people’s potential and abilities as well as talents.
Some hospitality companies are exceptionally large and multinational; therefore, they recruit many foreign workers and take workers to foreign countries a lot, as well (Marx 1999, p.73). Therefore, it is obvious that these workers face a challenge in adjusting to the new environment and cultural values. Globalization of the hospitality industry has seen an increased number of workforces (Brotherton 2003, p.108).
Some extremely proficient expatriates sometimes fail to perform as appropriate when they are seen to other countries to work. Cultural shock has been found to be the main challenge. It may seem funny that people get surprised at other people’s behaviour, culture, and customs (Jeannet 2000, p.113).
However, it is more terrible when one is conducting business with the very same people. Cultural shock comes as an unanticipated negative reaction to the different ways of life of other ethnicities (Branston et al. 2006, p.356), when people move from one place to another.
The different foods, language, customs, and behaviour can cause the new employee to be uncomfortable. This means preparedness is particularly essential for the hospitality expatriates. Therefore, if a company can manage diversity in culture well, it is likely to gain a lot from the new cultures (Deresky 2002, p.67).
In the first instance, a worker maybe excited and highly curious to know or learn everything and all the things seem to be extremely appealing. This entails cultural surprise and Branston et al. describe that as a feeling of wellbeing and comfort (2006, p.358).
In order to ensure the workers are well prepared for the new culture, there needs to be breaking of the cultural barriers and effectively finish the cross-cultural adjustment. Human beings relate through five ways. The first is via rules and relationships (Deresky 2002, p.67). A person can be a Universalist whereby his/her own culture has rule-based structure that is abstract.
In the West, contract between people are made and defined by rules rather than the relationship between the two people. A relationship-based culture is different, and such a particularistic people will make judgements based on the relative significance of other people (Marx 1999, p.73).
The second is the “me versus us” relationship. Individual societies like the North Americans highly appreciate individual freedom. Communitarian cultures like Mexico, china, France, and Japan believe more in common goals even when it stands in the way of their individual freedom (Lewis 1999, p.89).
Third, is, the neutral culture versus affective culture where people carefully control their feelings like most Asians who are neutral. However, the affective cultures prefer full expression of emotions like the Latin Americans. The specific and diffuse cultures form the fourth aspect (Lewis 1999, p.97).
People separate their work from place in a specific culture, while diffuse all aspects of life are typically together and/or overlap (Kippenberger 2000, p.30). Chinese are diffuse in culture, and thus there is the status “being” versus “doing” culture.
In the first category, ones achieve status is based on personal accomplishments; however, the status being is based on age gender and family among others. Such status cultures include Arabs, Indians, and Thai. The status doing include Americans, British, Norwegian and the Dutch among others (Kippenberger 2000, p.32).
Expatriates need an understanding of the different cultures so that they can be prepared for any possible cultural barriers that could arise from meeting people from different backgrounds.
Therefore, the main thing is to increase awareness and respect to the various cultures that exist (Schneider, & Barsoux 2003, p.69). The diverse workers need to place themselves in other people’s shoes and reflect on their own lives to understand others (Marx 1999, p.73).
Being able to match the cultural, linguistic and geographical as well as social and economical factor is extremely crucial in the success of the hospitality industry. These factors also enable better client access, engagement, sufficient retention, and fruitful outcomes (Dowling, & Welch 2008, p.187).
The process of recruitment should thus include activities that effectively aid in the increase of the number of employees that are better able to provide the culturally and linguistically varied services to the customers (Dowling, & Welch 2008, p.187).
Culturally inclusive recruitment practices assist in engaging and retaining a diverse workforce, which is capable of offering diverse services. The hospitality industry being a sector that gets clients from different backgrounds needs to have employees who understand the same concept (Schneider, & Barsoux 2003, p.69).
This increases responsiveness to the service and can enhance the attractiveness of the business when it is culturally and linguistically diverse. Education development programs should reflect the diversity, as well.
When the workers are drawn from a wider talent pool, viz. the international and national setting, probably the employer has reached a wider variety of talents. Therefore, the chances of having picked the best people possible for the job are high as well especially when the local labour pool is not able to supply the right talent (Kirton, & Greene 2000, p.165).
It is necessary to recognize that, cultural diverse backgrounds, at the workplace, are highly intricate and does not just simply reflect the international staff recruited. Most countries do not just have a homogenous population. Even if they did, the clientele in the hospitality industry are never from one region (Holden 2002, p.143).
Hospitality sector increases its productivity and innovation by recruiting the correct people and then offering the appropriate environment for them to work in (Cullen, & Farrelly 2005, p. 98). With reliable and effective human resource policies, a hospitality business can create an environment of creativity and innovation, which assists in enhancing employee engagement.
Being dynamic is different from having a talented workforce. Retaining the workforce is also another thin and sometimes in the competitive hospitality industry, it is quite challenging to retain talented workers (Holden 2002, p.143). Furthermore, retaining immigrant works has unique challenges; therefore, a combination of these facts makes the problem particularly tricky.
When cultural diversity is effectively managed, company’s competitiveness increases considerably. The hospitality industry needs exactly this as it is an extremely competitive one compared to other service industries. In order to survive intensive and aggressive competition, companies under this industry need to control labour costs, motivate employees and increase customer share.
Successful diversity management is a strategy that undoubtedly helps (Warner, & Joynt 2002, p.92). In the current market dynamics, firms need to serve various client groups with different characteristics. There are some significant challenges that need the following recommendations to manage
- There has to be a system in place to continuously collect and process diversity information.
- There needs to be a mechanism for facilitating the proactive identification of diversity challenges and opportunities in the end.
- There should be and effective decision making strategy that identifies alternative and the best options available and also be able to evaluate the impact of diversity decisions in other areas of the company, and whenever necessary take long-term action (Nemetz, & Christensen 1996, p.436).
- There should be a responsibility for diversity assigned to a certain department like the human resources so that all the roles are addressed appropriately. Efficient decision-making has to be in place where all the issues about diversity in terms of labour force and client are addressed. This will offer better support and leadership for diversity (Nemetz, & Christensen 1996, p.436).
- There needs to be training programs for diversity and management of the related needs, and that should be part of training for the workforce to work in the hospitality industry at the college level or even when they get in to the job market and start working, the organization can offer the training.
In the current dynamic economic market, it is pertinent to have the ability to serve customers from differ backgrounds. Diversity gives hospitality businesses this ability to understand client needs and maintain relationships with them for a long term when customer loyalty is developed.
As discussion about workforce diversity increases, and minority groups enter the business of hospitality, managing cultural diversity become even more and more challenging particularly to the HR officers as diversity remains a critical issue that can determine the success of a business.
Reference List
Anca, D & Vazquez, A 2007, Managing Diversity In The Global Organisation, Macmillan, New York.
Branston, C, Ineson, E & Lyons, A 2006, ‘Cross Cultural Change, Adjustment, and Culture Shock: UK to USA’, Tourism, vol. 54 no. 4, pp. 355-365.
Brotherton, B 2003, International Hospitality Industry, 5th edn, Butterworth Heinemann Oxford.
Cullen, J & Farrelly, M 2005, Best Practice HR In Ireland, Oak Tree Press, Dublin.
Deresky, H 2002, International Management. Managing Across Borders and Cultures, Prentice Hall, London.
Dowling, P & Welch, D 2008, International Human Resources Management: Managing People in a Multinational Context, 5th edn, Thomas Learning, London.
Holden, N 2002, Cross-Cultural Management. A Knowledge Management Perspective, Prentice Hall, London.
Jeannet, J 2000, Managing With a Global Mindset, Prentice Hall, London:
Kippenberger, T 2000, ‘Global Economy Possibly, But Cultural Diversity Certainly’, The Antidote, vol. 5 no. 2, pp. 28-32
Kirton, G & Greene, A 2000, The Dynamics of Managing Diversity, Butterworth Heinemann, Oxford.
Leitner, K 2008, ‘Cultural Diversity: Making Staff Differences Work’ NZ Business, vol. 22 no. 4, pp.16-17.
Lewis, R 1999, When Cultures Collide – Managing Successfully Across Cultures, Brealey Publishing, London.
Marx, E 1999, Breaking Through Culture Shock, Brealey Publishing, London.
Nemetz, P & Christensen, L 1996, ‘The Challenge of Cultural Diversity: Harnessing A Diversity of Views to Understand Multiculturalism’, Academy of Management Review, vol. 21 no. 4, pp. 434-462.
Schneider, S & Barsoux, J 2003, Managing Across Cultures, Prentice Hall, London.
Warner, M & Joynt, P 2002, Managing Across Cultures: Issues And Perspectives, 2nd edn, Thomson Learning, London.
Wetherell, M 2008, Identity, Ethnicity, Diversity and Community Cohesion, Sage Publications, London.
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